WASHINGTON (AP) — The bravery behind Donald Trump’s boastful 2016 hypothesis — “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose a single voter” — is being tested in the real world.
So far, at least, he has been astonishingly right. Through his two impeachments, his desperate attempts to hold on to power after losing the last election, and the wide-ranging series of criminal charges against him from Florida to Georgia to Washington to New York, Trump has retained the influence of his supporters and most of the Republican Party.
But now he is the first president in history to be convicted of a stern crime. Will that play a role in the November election?
After the devastating verdict, everyone seemed to be storming the partisan walls. But this is up-to-date territory for Americans – this finding of criminal conduct, unanimously signed and sealed by the jury, against the only man to appear in both a presidential portrait and a mug shot.
Even some staunch Trump opponents don’t expect the convictions to make a difference. “Get ready for a criminal president,” said Joan Marks, a 58-year-old Democrat who delivered her dire prediction of a Trump victory outside Manuel’s Tavern, a popular liberal hangout near Jimmy Carter’s presidential library in Atlanta.
Trump’s campaign team received donations – more than a million dollars for each of the 34 convictions, his people said.
The case will go down in history as “The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump.” But after the verdict, just as before it, leading Republicans and a number of like-minded voters dismissed it as another egregious example of “us versus them.”
“Political persecution at the highest level,” said Patrick Morrisey, Attorney General of West Virginia and Republican candidate for governor. The leaders of the Republican parties in South Carolina, Illinois and New York attacked the judiciary of the “banana republics.”
There was much talk from other high party circles of a “sham trial,” a “rigged verdict,” a “sham court,” and Soviet-style machinations—as if the 34 convictions had been handed down by apparatchiks rather than a jury of twelve members selected by both the defense and the prosecution.
Even Moscow took Trump’s side. “As for Trump, it is quite obvious that political opponents are being effectively eliminated by all legal and illegal means and the whole world can see this with the naked eye,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Trump’s initial reaction to the verdict suggested that he would wear his conviction like a crown, and there were already signs of retaliation against any Republican who dared to speak out in favor of the trial.
Shortly before the verdict was announced, Larry Hogan, the anti-Trump Republican Senate candidate in Maryland and former governor, issued a plea for all Americans to accept the jury’s decision, whatever it may be. He added: “At this dangerously divided moment in our history, no politician – regardless of party affiliation – should add fuel to the fire with more toxic partisanship.”
Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump campaign adviser, countered by saying, “You just finished your campaign.”
Among voters, Justin Gonzalez, a 21-year-old student and tutor from the Texas border town of McAllen, said he learned something quite disturbing about Trump during the trial. “He is many things, but I personally have never thought he was a liar,” he said. “I guess this would change my perception of him.”
But as he prepares for his first presidential run, Gonzales is more concerned with enforcing immigration laws than the nasty issue surrounding the cover-up of payments to silence a porn star. “Of all the other issues, that’s still bad, but it’s not enough to make me vote for Biden.”
An ABC-Ipsos poll conducted in slow April found that 80 percent of Trump’s supporters would stick with him even if he were found guilty of a crime in the hush money case. Only 4 percent said they would withdraw their vote, but 16 percent said they would reconsider. In an election that is expected to be close, even miniature shifts in support could make a difference.
In the Lower Manhattan courthouse, the first president to rise to power through tabloid fame and reality TV faced the ultimate tabloid charges, and yet, following a history of our time, he is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
With his ever-present sense of spectacle – even when the proceedings were not televised – Trump turned the trial as best he could into a stage for his re-election campaign.
In other contexts, he has been successful with his megaphone – shouting down his opponents, attacking them on social media, and giving them humiliating nicknames – but this time, some of his usual maneuvers were not available. He was not in control of the situation. He could not easily circumvent the constraints of a courtroom and the plain language of the law. Occasionally, he tried, and the judge ordered him to remain still, fined him, and threatened worse. Most of the time, he scowled, and sometimes appeared Zen or sleepy.
This is nothing up-to-date for New Yorkers, who love him or hate him—there’s little in between—have long considered him an escape artist who has had to fight his way through the thicket of legal, economic and political thorns that have plagued his entire career.
This time he didn’t escape.
“Finally, some accountability,” said Nadine Striker, who celebrated the verdict at a public pond across from the courthouse, a mile from Fifth Avenue. She held a huge banner reading “TRUMP CONVICTED” and wore a headband with a hand-sized cutout of prosecutor Alvin Bragg.
In November 1973, Richard Nixon declared at a meeting of senior newspaper editors of the Associated Press, “I am not a crook.” Back then, during the Watergate scandal that ultimately consumed his presidency, it looked like he might be just that.
But in the Nixon case, this question was never brought to court. In the Trump case, however, it was.
But with Trump you never know. Maybe there’s still a bit of Harry Houdini in him.
“Anyone else would go to jail,” Striker said. “I don’t expect that from him.”
___
Associated Press writers Cedar Attanasio in New York, Bill Barrow in Atlanta, John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, and Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this report.
